Brundtland Commission
'Brundtland Commission ' definition “In the 1980s the UN set up the Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission, named after its Chair Gro Harlem Brundtland. The outcome of the Brundtland Commission was a comprehensive document entitled "Our Common Future", otherwise known as the Brundtland Report. This report framed much of what would become the 40 chapters of Agenda 21 and the 27 principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. The report defined sustainable development as development which: ‘meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’” http://www.earthsummit2012.org/about-us/previous-summits/58-the-brundtland-commission discussion “''Discussions of sustainable development typically reach back to the definition of the concept developed by the Brundtland Commission in its landmark publication Our Common Future (WCED, 1987). Typically this will be a paraphrased version of ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (cf. Seuring et al., 2003). Many of the studies that purport to discuss sustainable development keep the definition of the concept pegged at the introductory statement presented over 20 years ago by the Brundtland report. Yet when they revisit this document many readers may be surprised to see that this concept is considerably expanded upon in the original source: in fact there are approximately 280 words in the summary definition and 1088 words in the elucidation that follows, spread over four pages of text (pp. 43–46). Even more surprising might be that the commonly used definition of ‘…meets the needs…’.is actually only the first two lines of the first paragraph. In its full length, the first paragraph of the Brundtland definition (WCED, 198, p. 43) reads: '' ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: • the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and • the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.’ Since its popularization through Our Common Future, multiple discourses have emerged on sustainable development, some of which appear to be mutually exclusive (Banerjee, 2007; Luke, 2005; Redclift, 2005). As an indicator, the emphasis above on overwhelming priority to be given to the world’s poor seems to be particularly lacking in many of these proliferating discussions on sustainability (Doyle, 1998). Such shifts in emphasis between 1987 and 2011 provide the rationale for this paper to revisit the original interpretation of sustainable development in the Brundtland report and to examine to what extent the principles embedded in the original elucidation are still part of discussions of sustainable development today. In doing so, we will place particular emphasis on the private sector because the private sector – alongside other societal actors – has a significant potential to address and overcome a range of economic, social and environmental challenges linked to currently unsustainable aspects of development” (Barkemeyer et al. 2011).